The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles and the Rise of America's Secret Government

by David Talbot

appeasement of the Communist enemy. Dulles grew bolder in his opposition. He met with a controversial Cuban exile leader named Paulino Sierra Martinez, a former henchman for the deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Sierra, whose anti-Castro activities were underwritten by the Mafia and U.S. corporations with a stake in Cuba, later fell under Secret Service suspicion in a conspiracy against President Kennedy. The topic of Sierra’s meeting with Dulles in April 1963 remains a mystery. By October 1963, Dulles felt confident enough to speak out against Kennedy’s foreign policy in public, ignoring the Washington etiquette that deemed it bad form to criticize a president whom you recently had served.